I am one of the few people left that still use Garmin's car GPS. I currently use the latest model, the Drive Smart 66. It is my daily driver (lol?).
I recently went on a cross country road trip and this thing worked perfectly even when I was in the middle of the desert or driving through a canyon. It was nice to not rely on cell phone service for navigation on this trip.
Although the question often comes up: why not just use your phone? There are pros and cons for sure.
--------
Pros:
- You don't need a cellular connection for map data. -- Counter Point: You can download map data on google maps. True, but it is something extra that you need to remember to do.
- You don't need to waste your cellular data -- Counter Point: Don't most people have unlimited plans these days?
- A corporation isn't tracking your every move -- Counter Point: Most people don't seem to care about this.
- Modern Garmin GPSs can get traffic data -- Counter Point: It requires a cellphone and it is not going to be as good as google maps
- Modern GPS screens look just as good as a phone and you can get one that is as large as a tablet -- Counter Point: you could probably use a tablet and google maps
- Garmin makes GPS units for specific vehicles like motorcycles and RVs and they take their vehicles quirks into account when routing trips. Google maps is one size fits all
- A Garmin GPS unit from 20 years ago will still work today as long as you can update the maps.
- Because of the previous point, it is very nice to keep one of these in the trunk of your car as a back up
- Garmin GPSes can handle sitting in the hot sun without overheating, which some cell phones are prone to do.
- I really like having the GPS on my dashboard so I don't have to look down and to the right to look at my car's infotainment screen -- Counter Point: You can mount a phone on your dashboard or windshield. They even sell stand alone monitors for your car where you can view apple car play as it was a stand alone gps.
Neutral
- The routing can make weird mistakes, but this is true for all GPSes including apple maps and google maps
Cons
- And this is the biggest: it is nowhere near as good at finding businesses as google maps. To me that is google map's killer feature